Family Guy: "Ocean's Three and a Half" Review

Bonnie finally gives birth, and Stewie falls in love.

After a prolonged absence, Family Guy makes its long awaited return with an episode featuring the birth of Bonnie's child. With some extremely memorable gags, a couple of catchy musical numbers and a genuinely plausible storyline, it definitely feels like this episode was well worth the wait.

In a welcome break from the usual string of uninspired random sequences, this episode features some pretty story-heavy developments such as Stewie falling in love with Joe's daughter Susan, an elaborate sequence of events leading to a robbery attempt in order to help Joe pay his wife's hospital bill, and of course, the birth of Joe's daughter. Despite the strong emphasis on telling an overall story, writer Cherry Chevapravatdumrong did manage to squeeze in some of the best random jokes we've seen this season.

Standout moments in this episode include a side-splittingly hilarious re-enactment of Christian Bale's much publicized tirade from the set of Terminator Salvation. Seamlessly blended with bits of Peter's voice, the audio clip shown in the episode ranks right up there with some of the best timely pop-culture references in the series.

Stewie's music video to the tune of Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do" is a smart parody of nearly every music video from the late '80s and early '90s. Some great use of slow-motion cuts, wannabe artsy imagery, and weird camera angles are overlaid with a catchy interpretation of the still overexposed ballad rounds up the entire sequence nicely.

Watching Joe get his diapers changed at the same time as his daughter is another hilarious visual and is topped off with a great ironic line about feeling like less of a man because he can't pay his child's hospital bill.

Other hilarious quick jabs include Peter's plans to induce labor in Bonnie using Two and a Half Men, Cleveland's use of Reese Witherspoon's chin as a way to break into a vault, Pewtershmidt's conversation with Bill Gates about his Zune, and Stewie's conversation with Brian about song's named after girls.

The climactic vault break-in by Peter, Cleveland and Quagmire features some additional memorable gags and serves as an excellent way to cap off this strong episode. It's very hard not to laugh at the image of Peter and Quagmire in mustaches dancing to the tune of "The Safety Dance" or the penile identification security measures in Pewterschmidt's vault. Lois talking Joe out of robbing her father is also hilarious, with all her walking references, and having Megatron get in the final word is a nice way to close the sequence. Stewie's all too brief heterosexual stint is then promptly ended as his affections are shifted away from Susie and on to Bryan Adams.

It's been a while since we've had a consistently intelligent and funny episode like this. The combination of timely pop-culture references, great musical numbers, and a well conceived storyline work extremely well here. Even after a couple of repeated viewings, this episode is still funny. It's probably the most multiple viewing friendly episode we've seen this season, and is reminiscent of some of the ground-breaking pre-cancellation episodes that helped establish Family Guy's reputation as one of the funniest animated shows on television. It's been a while since we've had new episodes, but it certainly feels like it's been worth the wait as "Ocean's Three and a Half" turns out to be a triumphant return to form for the series.